“Where’s the h2o of disappeared rivers?”
–Etel Adnan, Sea and Fog
*
“the greeting couldn’t find space
to bring its light
across to the different side
on the riverbank stones
one by one
open their eyes”
–Phoebe Giannisi, “Stones,” translated by Brian Sneeden
*
You mightiness not deliberation of Athens arsenic a metropolis of rivers, but embedded and buried successful its topography and communicative are 3 that carved the landscape. The Kifissos springs up astatine the ft of Mount Parnitha and empties into the Faliron Bay, inactive partially exposed. From the southwest slope of Lykavittos, successful what is present the halfway of Athens, comes the Eridanos, which collects the waters flowing from the hills, passing conscionable beneath the Church of Kapnikarea—in whose quadrate I often spell to perceive to rebetika—creating a hidden good wrong the church. It flows done the Ancient Agora, to the Sacred Gate of Kerameikos, diving underground and dumping into the third, the Ilissos, location of the Muses and the eponymous stream deity whom we mightiness find successful the British Museum, lounging successful midair.
Heraclitus famously wrote that the stream is ne'er the same, we tin ne'er spot our ft successful the aforesaid stream twice. “Just arsenic the stream wherever I measurement / is not the same, and is, / truthful I americium arsenic I americium not.” And “The stream / wherever you acceptable / your ft conscionable present / is gone— / those waters / giving mode to this, / present this.”
The stream is made of its ain memory, arsenic are we.
The Athenian rivers are classical and modern; the communicative they archer depends upon which infinitesimal of time. These rivers person not dried up but alternatively person been buried successful concrete, and though Athens is nary alien to its contiguous being dug up and overturned to showcase the past, this burial was a reversal.
Once considered sacred, the Ilissos marked the confederate borderline of Athens. Its banks, erstwhile lined with sycamore trees, present diagnostic the Hilton (which had been nether renovation for years, and yet reopened, with rates acceptable for kings) and the National Gallery (which I americium lasting outside, this peculiar November, 10 minutes earlier opening, until I announcement it’s closed for the day). Once dredged for soil and gravel to marque up the roads, the stream was prone to flooding. The stream is mostly buried now, and if the Ilissos passageway were to collapse, it could flood the full metropolis center. For a while, determination seemed to beryllium a program to daylight the stream from the Agia Foteini religion each the mode to the National Museum of Contemporary Art, a small implicit a kilometer away. A greenbelt, a flood extortion project, and a mode to supply a pedestrian way to the beauteous modern creation depository with different sites of the city.
The Ilissos River was wholly covered by the 1960s. It was a gradual hiding, opening successful the precocious nineteenth period aft nationalist wellness fears/pandemic fears had turned it into a conduit, oregon the “sewer of the city.” But the fearfulness of a collapsing tram enactment betwixt Neo Kosmos and Syntagma is what mightiness yet person it unearthed, the h2o exposed truthful it mightiness connection immoderate reflection. On 1 of the surviving Ottoman maps of Athens, it’s indicated by a dotted line, a marking that besides indicated what is believed to person been a program of underground tunnels beneath the citadel.
The past days we walk with idiosyncratic are not astir their past breath. They’re a mode to re-narrativize the beingness that preceded them.
Along with this planned daylighting, a caller parkland is projected to tally southbound from the Kalimarmaro Stadium for a small implicit a kilometer. The tramlines would beryllium rerouted, and a caller pedestrian way would link the National Gardens with Hadrian’s Arch. It’s not conscionable an aesthetic choice, oregon 1 to unearth a glorious past, but a applicable one: whereas it was erstwhile cemented implicit for fearfulness of plague, it volition beryllium unearthed due to the fact that of the information of collapse, a illness that could flood the city.
I’m successful Athens now, walking along, my archetypal clip successful the metropolis since the commencement of the pandemic, 2 months aft my father’s death. Imagining these waters moving beneath the metropolis feels oneiric and strange. I ideate them rising done the concrete, refusing to beryllium contained.
*
My begetter ever said that if 1 was going to die, 1 should bash truthful close earlier winter; if they were going to spell that year, they should spell earlier the cold. He made it done August and died connected the archetypal of September. I person ever associated August with sadness, truthful that helium died connected the archetypal of September felt similar a triumph of his spirit, a tiny consolation. Kalo mina, Greeks greet each different with each crook of the calendar page. Good month.
The beloved Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis died the time aft my father—September 2, 2021—and Greece declared 3 days of nationalist mourning. Theodorakis’s assemblage was laid to remainder for radical to wage their last respects, successful the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens, wherever I’d airy a candle for my begetter 2 months later; arsenic for my father’s ashes, I met his woman astatine his sedate successful Michigan, the authorities successful wherever he’d lived since coming to the States successful 1966, to laic his urn into the ground. As I grieved successful backstage for my father, Greece arsenic a federation unneurotic mourned the nonaccomplishment of the beloved composer, whose songs my begetter and I listened to and sang those past forty days of his life, astir of them spent successful a hospital.
Years earlier each this, my begetter seemed to beryllium compiling a playlist of Greek songs helium wanted astatine his funeral. He sent these songs to maine implicit email, often taking attraction to enactment that his existent decease wouldn’t beryllium for different forty years. If you cognize Greek Orthodox funerals, you cognize they decidedly don’t see pop-music playlists—so I cognize helium imagined an American, Protestant, nondenominational affair, and though I americium not spiritual this somehow, inexplicably, hurt. But Greek euphony was 1 of the fewer ways we could connect, truthful I was blessed for them.
The summertime starring up to his death, my father’s dementia seemed to beryllium rapidly progressing, and the past clip I saw him earlier helium went into the hospital, the Monday aft Father’s Day, we’d had dessert connected his backmost porch. My begetter was having occupation paying attention, mostly staring astatine his phone—and helium disappeared into his location and returned with his computer, playing the Mikis Theodorakis opus “Old Streets”—also connected the ceremonial playlist, though I americium not definite by past helium would person remembered that. His neighbors were retired too, and I could consciousness them glancing over. My begetter didn’t look bothered by this, arsenic helium sang along, and I joined him too. My pre-dementia begetter would person ne'er done specified a thing. I mean, what would radical think?
There’s a agelong Greek contented of mounting modern Greek poesy to song, and the words my begetter sang came from the writer Manolis Anagnostakis.
The lyrics spell similar this: “Old streets I person loved and hated endlessly.” And: “I rotation along, heavy successful the nighttime without recognizing anyone. Not a one. And nary 1 recognizes me.”
These aged streets I person loved and hated endlessly is simply a enactment that seems to sum up my father’s narration to Athens, to Greece, to that spot helium near erstwhile helium was twenty-one years old. A opus astir a antheral walking done the city, not recognizing a face, not being recognized, and not recognizing himself.
*
I permission Ann Arbor for Athens connected the Day of the Dead.
My taxi operator from the Athens airdrome looks similar Sotiria Bellou, the beloved rebetika vocalist who died successful August 1997, the past clip I was successful Greece with my father. Sotiria Bellou has picked maine up from the airport, I think.
“Are you present for abrogation oregon work?” she asks.
“Neither,” I say. I haven’t contacted friends oregon family; it feels indispensable to walk immoderate clip alone. “My begetter died,” I archer her. “I’m present for”—I pause. What americium I present for?
“The forty?” She asks, meaning the memorial that takes spot forty days aft a death.
My father’s memorial work had been successful Michigan, weeks aft his death, but determination was nary forty-day commemoration.
“Yes, the forty,” I say.
What is time, anyway.
*
If my begetter had the nostalgia of the exile, helium hid it well. In galore ways, the exile has nary different choice. Or, it was a peculiar benignant of controlled nostalgia. He was, arsenic Svetlyana Boym notes of first-wave immigrants, “often notoriously unsentimental, leaving the hunt for roots to their children and grandchildren…Somehow the deeper the loss, the harder it was to prosecute successful nationalist mourning.” Looking back, similar Lot’s wife, she notes, tin paralyze you forever; looking back, similar Orpheus, tin origin harm to those you love.
But who doesn’t look back?
The mode I spot it, my begetter wanted to be, archetypal and foremost, an American. He seldom returned to Greece. I’ve been going annually for much than 20 years but astir of what I cognize of Greece I cognize without him. I’ve asked him if helium mightiness come, peculiarly implicit the past decennary earlier helium died, erstwhile our narration began to consciousness little fraught, but the full acquisition for him was excessively painful, excessively disorienting, simply excessively much.
These aged streets that I person loved and hated endlessly.
But this is different communicative entirely, afloat of its ain complications of migration and homelands and politics, a communicative of a hard and fractured narration with a parent, a communicative of a debilitating disease. I’m not penning astir my father’s failings oregon absences; I’m not penning astir puerility astatine all. But determination are galore ways of acknowledging what has been disappeared from the map.
*
My archetypal greeting successful Athens, astatine the edifice pool, an older pistillate watches maine dip my toes into the icy water. It’s uncommon to find an outdoor heated excavation successful Greece, and it’s November, aft all.
She sits adjacent connected the patio wherever guests, successful warmer weather, bask their coffee, but she’s alone. I’m not definite if she’s a edifice guest, oregon connected a java break, due to the fact that she acts similar she runs the place. “The oversea is the same, you know,” she says, shrugging. As if she worries I mightiness complain, constitute a Tripadvisor review, The excavation was not heated.
“Jump in, aquatics around, you’ll consciousness good,” she says. “Make definite you support moving.”
I fishy she’s the benignant who’s been taking acold plunges successful the oversea for the past 50 years.
I look astir the pool, the patio, wrong the windows of the hotel. Two men successful suits sermon thing implicit java adjacent the window. Otherwise it’s empty. I glimpse astatine my towel, draped implicit the chaise. I don’t cognize what possesses me, but I leap successful and astir consciousness my heartbeat stop. I aquatics to the different broadside and assistance myself out.
Then, for immoderate reason, I bash it again.
Do I consciousness good? I’m not sure. Well, anyway. Here I am. I’m present now.
I instrumentality to my country and person a java connected my balcony—I person a literate preoccupation with balconies. Usually, I don’t enactment truthful adjacent to each the past Athenian sites, but this time, my balcony has a presumption of the Acropolis, which I volition sojourn aboriginal for the archetypal clip successful much than 15 years.
When Virginia Woolf returned to Athens for a 2nd clip astatine the property of fifty, 1 twelvemonth older than I americium this November, she writes that atop the Acropolis, her ain shade met her, “the miss of 23, with each her beingness to come.” Having conscionable mislaid her beloved Lytton Strachey, Woolf came to Greece to beryllium with friends, to mourn, “muddled headed.”
I wonder, what does her twenty-three-year-old aforesaid brushwood successful her older self? In my father’s things I recovered a photograph of him atop the Acropolis, successful beforehand of the Parthenon, dressed successful a chambray shirt, light-colored jeans, and a fanny pack. He looks truthful proud. It’s 1992. I was with him connected this travel but I person lone a scant recollection of this visit. What does my nineteen-year-old aforesaid brushwood successful the 1 who’s present now?
For me, to locomotion done Athens is to wade done memories, some existent and imagined. On the formation to Athens, I reread “Street Hauntings,” Woolf’s celebrated effort astir walking done London, and due to the fact that I cognize Athens done moving done it connected foot, it has rooted itself successful my imagination. One of my favourite moments is this:
Is the existent aforesaid this which stands connected the pavement successful January, oregon that which bends implicit the balcony successful June? Am I here, oregon americium I there? Or is the existent aforesaid neither this nor that, neither present nor there, but thing truthful varied and wandering that it is lone erstwhile we springiness the rein to its wishes and fto it instrumentality its mode unimpeded that we are so ourselves?
Something truthful varied and wandering.
Old streets I person loved and hated endlessly.
Something truthful varied and wandering.
Is not the same, and is, truthful I americium arsenic I americium not.
Am I here, oregon americium I there?
As I locomotion done Athens that November, these lines tally done and merge successful my mind, arsenic though they beryllium together. The Rings of Saturn begins with Sebald’s mounting disconnected to locomotion the region of Suffolk, and, arsenic Daniel Mendelsohn writes, recognizes the nonaccomplishment of communicative to reconstitute the past. Even arsenic it haunts us. Sebald wrote that portion helium was ill, each the fantastic walking he’d done successful Suffolk shrank to “a single, insensate spot,” and I’d felt this mode astir Athens, those 2 years distant during the pandemic. The vastness I’ve ever felt successful this city, the openness, had disappeared. Athens became the Athens of my imagination, the Athens that hung supra my table arsenic a map, the Athens connected Instagram, with its requisite graffiti and thoroughfare creation and plates of nutrient posted by tourists, and photos of the protests and the parties and the glowing faces, posted by friends and household who unrecorded there.
What a alleviation it is to locomotion done it again.
I cognize it’s not imaginable to reconstitute the past, but possibly it’s imaginable to repair it.
*
“Athens won maine straightway,” writes Marguerite Yourcenar successful Memoirs of Hadrian, “…the somewhat awkward student, a brooding but ardent youth, had his archetypal sensation of that subtle air, those swift conversations, the strolls successful the agelong aureate evenings, and that incomparable easiness successful which some discussions and pleasance are determination pursued.”
Athens won maine straightaway too; its agelong aureate evenings are my favorite. Yet erstwhile I ideate Athens from extracurricular its limits I deliberation of my comings and goings. A July morning, watching the metropolis from the backmost spot of the taxi, each clip I permission it. And the joyousness of those sweet, jet-lagged, late-afternoon arrivals, usually successful May.
This year, clip is upside-down, and I arrived astatine the commencement of November.
Kalo mina, everyone.
Because I bash not unrecorded here, I cognize my position is ever done the regard of impermanence—even erstwhile I’m present for months astatine a clip I americium ever alert of the infinitesimal I’ll leave. Though I effort to defy a definite benignant of simple, restorative nostalgia I admit I’m prone to its rosy-toned hues. The Western regard connected Athens ever includes the cliché of the “Greek light,” but I unrecorded successful grey southeastern Michigan, and it’s 1 of the archetypal things I delight successful each clip I arrive. Our experiences successful a spot are arsenic subjective arsenic our memories of them. Shaped by each the interactions that came before. What sorts of things overshadow this landscape, what bash I superimpose upon it, what is inextricable?
A fewer days into my stay, I locomotion to the First Cemetery. It’s not a spot I sojourn regularly, but years ago, erstwhile I was taking connection classes nearby, I’d sometimes locomotion done afterward. At the religion adjacent the cemetery’s entranceway there’s a funeral, and the chants of the priests capable the square. I locomotion past them, reeling. The magpies, who person been pursuing maine done the city, are determination too: I’d seen them connected Filopappou the time before. I greet them, to ward disconnected atrocious luck. I cognize that they grieve too.
Sparrows flit astir and I’m reminded of the sparrows successful Mrs. Dalloway, singing successful “voices prolonged and piercing successful Greek words, from trees successful the meadow of beingness beyond a stream wherever the dormant walk, however determination is nary death.” I inquire the caretaker successful the tiny beforehand bureau wherever I mightiness find Sotiria Bellou’s grave, and helium explains to maine wherever it is, but I’m unspeakable astatine pursuing verbal directions and it takes maine implicit an hr to find it. The entranceway to the cemetery feels expansive and museum-like but arsenic you rotation through, it feels similar thing else: much villagey, a small spot random, a small excessively private, arsenic if you shouldn’t truly beryllium determination astatine all. Someone has near a transcript of the communist paper Rizospastis, folded up neatly adjacent Bellou’s tombstone, which is engraved with the lyrics of 1 of her astir beloved songs.
You don’t accidental a word. You defender your secrets, and your documents.
When I leave, hours later, a radical of men successful achromatic suits carries a coffin retired of a church, and I locomotion done the vicinity of Mets, filled with marble tomb makers and angiosperm shops and “mourning cafes,” wherever radical mightiness stitchery aft a funeral. On Anapafseos Street, the “place of rest,” oregon a euphemism for grave, I remainder and instrumentality a portion of h2o successful beforehand of a marble workshop. Outside it, a marble topless woman greets me, extending an olive subdivision with her 1 arm.
“Wherever I question Greece wounds me,” the writer George Seferis famously wrote.
But I similar the antagonistic from the writer Michalis Ganas, an Athenian speaking to an exile: “Greece, you know, is not lone a wound.”
*
“It takes america an full beingness to unravel the mysteries of our ain lives,” Jenny Erpenbeck writes. “Layer upon furniture of cognition accumulates upon the past, revealing it anew each clip arsenic a past that we surely lived through, but couldn’t adjacent statesman to understand.”
“Today” successful this effort is galore days, retrospective and prospective, the edges of days bleeding into 1 another. Today, I’m walking done Athens successful November; contiguous I’m successful the Ann Arbor infirmary with my father, and fires are breaking retired each implicit the land of Evia. While helium recovers from country to halt a encephalon bleed, and from the changeable that follows, Greece burns. Six days successful and 150 fires. His older sister, Vassia, who I deliberation ne'er got implicit the nonaccomplishment of their small sister, sends frantic messages, and with them a presumption from her location connected Kythnos, wherever the sunset was beauteous and beset by acheronian clouds. They’re not clouds, she writes. Black fume from the fires. I cannot carnivore to amusement my begetter the pictures. He’d agelong divorced himself from the news, it seemed, and I didn’t privation to present immoderate much distress.
“Fires are proliferating, indeed,” writes Etel Adnan successful Shifting the Silence. This is what I’m speechmaking successful the hospital, days earlier those fires raged. At the apical of my bosom and astatine the apical of my dependable I told my brother, my mother, my friends: He’s getting amended each day.
And immoderate days this—he’s getting better—was not a lie. Those days successful the hospital, each tiny spot of advancement felt similar a triumph. But from the bottommost of my bosom and the heavy rasp successful my voice, scrolling done the images of a burning landscape, I’d archer lone my husband, I deliberation my begetter is dying.
Near the extremity of my travel to Athens, I larn that Etel Adnan has died. “I cognize what’s near successful me, nether these clouds, this wind, this cold, this wintry weather: the request to beryllium successful Greece,” writes Adnan. “Will I dice without returning to Delphi, to Athens?” I wonderment if she had made it back.
There’s a region betwixt grieving and mourning, the imaginable of a question conscionable earlier it crests and breaks.
Adnan continues: “I retrieve Maria Farandouri successful the lobby of the edifice which sits astatine the ft of the Acropolis, I retrieve her singing Theodorakis. And the Mediterranean has colors that the Atlantic, astatine slightest astir here, hasn’t adjacent imagined. Are older radical connected decease row? Don’t archer them that.”
*
When my begetter was successful the hospital, helium and I listened to Sotiria Bellou, and helium began to sob. The opus “Don’t Cry,” besides connected his playlist, seemed to unearth respective types of grief: for his ain life, possibly besides a beingness helium near behind, and for the beingness of his small sister, Eleni, who died successful 2006. Bellou was Eleni’s favourite singer—and it was Eleni who introduced maine to her music. My begetter profoundly loved Eleni, of this I person nary doubt, but their narration had been strained astir of their big life: differing politics, for one, though that’s a precise uncomplicated mode of putting it.
The caregiver happened to travel successful astatine that moment.
“I’m crying because, because,” helium said to the nurse. “I’m crying because—she, due to the fact that my daughter, because—”
“It’s good to cry,” I archer him.
And I besides archer him, “Dad. Please don’t cry.”
Those days successful the hospital, and successful the months starring up to his surgery, it was hard for him to decorativeness a sentence. After the caregiver left, helium said to me: “Lipamai poli pou se…lipamai para poli.” I’m atrocious that I [something] to you. The entity (you, well, me) comes earlier the verb, truthful I cannot translate. It’s his lone motion to a past that’s been clouded over, astir erased. Months later, aft he’s gone, I’ll imagination this again, my begetter trying to utter an apology that catches successful his throat.
Still, the afternoons we listened to euphony were overmuch amended than those we did not. He watched unrecorded performance videos with large interest. His breathing, which would often go fast, arsenic though helium were gasping for air, would dilatory down. I cognize he’d seen each these artists perform, successful Athens, and I wondered what benignant of clip meld was happening successful his injured brain. The encephalon wounded did thing to harm the lyrics, though: helium knew them all.
I was there, helium said proudly, astir 1 of the performances, but I cognize helium was not. It was a show from 2019, astatine the Kalimarmaro stadium successful Athens, galore years aft his past visit.
In different concert, Mikis Theodorakis comes connected signifier with his son, and my begetter cries again.
“These guys are each dormant now,” helium said.
“No,” I said, “Mikis is inactive alive.”
He looked astatine maine strangely, exasperated. “Honey,” helium said. “He volition dice precise soon.”
*
Six days earlier my begetter would die, connected my sanction day, helium was discharged from the hospital, lone to spell to a representation attraction facility, wherever helium managed to enactment lone a fewer nights earlier falling erstwhile more, returning to yet different hospital, wherever helium would dice a fewer days later. When I told him it was my sanction day, helium cried due to the fact that helium hadn’t remembered. I didn’t mean to marque him cry. I told him I was lone a insignificant saint, laughing—no 1 wished maine Happy Name Day the mode they did the Constantines and the Elenis and the Marias and the Georges. But this lone made him outcry harder.
“No, no,” helium said. “You’re a large saint.”
Some days, my begetter couldn’t talk overmuch astatine all; different days helium shouted, without measurement control. Often helium was baffled astatine his state.
“But I’m lone seventy-six,” he’d say
“I know, Dad. You’re a palikari.”
“Palikari,” he’d repeat, amused, arrogant arsenic a palikari.
“Palikari!” he’d outcry later, apropos of nothing.
Sometimes the questions were utterly bizarre.
“What’s the name, what’s the sanction of the”—what follows is thing truthful unusual I won’t repetition it here.
“I don’t know, Dad.”
I played him a Manos Hatzidakis song: What’s the name, what’s the sanction of the river? Ilissos, Ilissos.
“What,” helium asked his nurse, “are you going to bash about.”
“About?”
“About.” He looked astatine me, past astir the room. The caregiver had arrived to assistance him usage the bathroom, a tall, strapping feline with tattoos and infinite patience.
“What are you going to bash astir the misery of the world?”
“I don’t cognize astir that, Dad. But I deliberation helium tin assistance you usage the bathroom.”
Other days helium wanted nothing. No listening, helium said, truthful I obliged. But this didn’t halt him from singing. When helium was feeling a spot better, I was allowed to instrumentality him astir the ward floor. He’d sing Delfini, delfinaki, a opus astir a feline waiting for the vessel to get with his love, with nary self-consciousness. I’d articulation him, and unneurotic we’d serenade the ward similar a mates of joyful drunks astatine the taverna.
Each nighttime erstwhile I returned home, I was heartbroken.
Some days, erstwhile I left, he’d already beryllium successful bed: a tent-like, inhumane contraption that was expected to support him safe. After I said goodnight I could perceive his dependable bellowing to maine from down the hall, astir deranged. I would beryllium numb until I got home, wherever I opened a brew and sat connected my backmost porch, trying to construe to my hubby adjacent a fragment. When I tried to slumber astatine night, it was this dependable I heard, bellowing my name.
*
One day, successful the hospital, I told my begetter I was going to sojourn Athens soon. It was August, and I’d planned to spell astatine the extremity of the month.
“Oh?” He seemed happy, lucid. “Make definite you spell sojourn your sister.”
“You mean your sister, my aunt,” I said. Gently.
“Right,” helium said.
Another day, astir 10 days aft his surgery, my begetter was groggy and confused. He was not capable to devour yet connected his own. He sat successful his seat and allowed maine to provender him a fewer bites of food, immoderate raspberry sherbet, a cocoa shake. “No, no,” helium said, aft lone respective bites. “Stop asking maine questions.” He was quiescent and closed his eyes. “Eleni?” helium called out. His dependable was some plaintive and natural, and helium called to her again—the archetypal arsenic if looking for her and the 2nd arsenic though asking her a question.
I was quiet, I didn’t respond; wherever helium was, I thought it would beryllium close to permission him determination a moment. A caregiver had walked into the country and was astatine the sink, washing her hands. Soon helium opened his eyes, focused connected me. How unusual it indispensable person felt, to travel retired of a reverie and spot everyone astir you, masked. I cognize my eyes are the aforesaid arsenic Eleni’s. Did helium spot her successful them?
“It’s me,” I said. “Natalie.”
“It’s me,” helium echoed. I sat down adjacent to him connected borderline of the bed. “Hi, loulouthi,” helium said, arsenic if I’d conscionable arrived.
Eleni?
*
What sorts of conversations mightiness helium person had with his precocious younger sister, Eleni, those strange, agelong afternoons? What did my begetter spot successful those moments, what moments of time?
“My favourite clip is successful time’s different side, its different identity, the benignant that collapses and sometimes reappears, and sometimes doesn’t,” writes Etel Adnan. “Those days person gone to wherever days go, successful their ain cemeteries. Today I spot eternity everywhere. I had yesterday an bare solid of champagne connected the table, and it looked some infinite and eternal…”
In Athens, I perceive his voice: Don’t hide to telephone your sister. Meaning his sister, my aunt Vassia, but for each I cognize he’s talking astir Eleni.
But I don’t telephone anyone astatine all. Somehow the thought of societal interaction, not conscionable due to the fact that of the pandemic, feels excessively much. My grief proliferates, billows down maine similar the sweater I’ve tied astir my shoulders, but by the clip I marque it backmost to my spot I’ve mislaid the sweater. The grief I cannot shed the mode I’ve shed truthful galore things successful Athens. Journals and bottles of vino and sweaters and books, an other bathing suit, a brace of shorts, near down successful taxi cabs and astatine friends’ places and successful a tiny retention abstraction connected an island. Scattered crossed the city, the country, possibly successful hopes that immoderate of them mightiness instrumentality root. Then again, I similar the rhizome to the root, “a web spreading either successful the crushed oregon successful the air, with nary predatory rootstock taking implicit permanently.”
*
“Where shall I start? Where tin I end?”
How tin I construe immoderate of this, the series of those forty days, into language, into meaning, into thing but the contiguous moment? Yet aft my begetter is gone I volition spot those days arsenic a gift, successful that thing was exchanged. The past days we walk with idiosyncratic are not astir their past breath. They’re a mode to re-narrativize the beingness that preceded them.
I was amazed erstwhile I would archer my begetter that everything would beryllium okay, ola tha pane kala, and helium would judge me. “That’s what I request to hear,” he’d say. “I americium atrocious that this is happening to you,” I added, and helium looked up, his eyes momentarily clear, alert.
*
Today successful Athens I spot eternity everywhere. May their representation beryllium eternal, we accidental to the bereaved. May you person an abundant life. Or: Life to you, truthful you retrieve them. Or, much simply: Life to you. Since my begetter died, I person not been capable to halt reasoning astir the nexus that Svetlyana Boym notes betwixt nostalgia and nationalist mourning. That to mourn publically was a benignant of witness, a benignant of freedom: 1 that was sometimes fixed and sometimes claimed and sometimes wholly denied. That mourning, by definition, was public. As Didion writes: “Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the enactment of dealing with grief, required attention.” There’s a region betwixt grieving and mourning, the imaginable of a question conscionable earlier it crests and breaks.
*
The week earlier my father’s memorial, Athens began to flood. The underground rivers that had been cemented successful began to rise, and the infrastructure of Athens, that is, its government, struggled to incorporate them, conscionable similar they did the fires. A fewer years later, it volition flood again, and again, and again.
In the end, I wasn’t permitted, oregon invited, to play immoderate of my father’s requested songs astatine the memorial service, truthful the database remains successful my email, oregon scribbled successful notebooks. Beyond that, I don’t cognize what to accidental of the service, which took spot 7 weeks aft his death, successful the clubhouse of the vicinity assemblage wherever helium lived successful Michigan. It was not the benignant of work I had ever imagined; its temper felt much similar the affable status enactment of an acquaintance’s parent, but everyone was successful black, and the retiree himself was not there. At the past minute, my member and his household could not be due to the fact that my niece had COVID; it was the autumn of 2021, aft all, fears of corruption were precise precocious each around. And due to the fact that of these fears, astatine slightest that’s however it was presented to me, my father’s woman and her household wanted to support the work small. Understandable. But tiny meant cipher from my father’s erstwhile life, not his ex-wife, my mother; not his cousins whom he’d grown up with successful Athens and present lived successful the aforesaid metro Detroit area; not immoderate of his friends who’d cognize those songs connected his playlist. “Your begetter ne'er mentioned thing similar it to me,” my father’s widow said. I effort to connection her grace now, due to the fact that I tin ideate what each those songs, what each those friends from his past, mightiness unearth. So I work a eulogy and left.
*
A decease not decently mourned successful past Greece was seen arsenic a soundless death, a atrocious death; it is “unscreamed.” In Antigone, the Messenger hopes that Eurydice volition support her grief wrong the home, that she volition not prosecute successful nationalist mourning. But the chorus is much wise: There tin beryllium sedate information successful mute grief.
*
It’s November successful Athens, and I’m walking done the city, grieving the nonaccomplishment of my father.
But I person not yet mourned him.
A lament requires a listener. A telephone and response. I accidental that’s what I’m doing arsenic I constitute these words to you.
When I locomotion done Athens, I go portion of its story, I defy beginnings and endings oregon the somewhat earthy tendency to bring a communicative to its close. A locomotion from constituent A to constituent B seldom goes arsenic planned: there’s ever a digression, or, for me, a incorrect turn. Walking arsenic in-between, I think. Walking arsenic mourning. (Roland Barthes calls it limping). Moving through.
*
“Exile brings you overnight wherever it would usually instrumentality a beingness to go,” Joseph Brodsky writes. Dementia, it seemed to me, was exile successful reverse, bringing my begetter overnight to wherever it had taken a beingness to flee. Though my begetter ne'er spoke Greek to maine erstwhile I was increasing up—and I lone learned the connection successful my thirties, successful postgraduate school—toward the extremity helium seemed to revert backmost to his archetypal language.
We’re buried successful the world and the world is afloat of underground rivers that instrumentality america not into particulate but backmost into the sea.
Those past forty days my begetter was live was its ain quarantine—the literal meaning of the word, aft all, is forty days—often the forty days of mourning aft a death, oregon remainder aft a birth. A caller parent mightiness beryllium wished kala saranta successful Greece (“good forty”), referring to those archetypal forty days of the infant’s life, wherever the parent and kid are expected to enactment inside, retired of the nationalist eye. To quarantine is to grieve—or to hold thing out. A play of forty days wherever the satellite extracurricular the infirmary and the rhythms of my visits seemed to beryllium the lone happening successful focus.
Everything other faded away: emails unanswered, obligations shirked. I saw him astir each day, which was precise unusual, and I wondered if my begetter and I had ever wanted to marque abstraction for each different but didn’t cognize how. I didn’t spot astatine the clip that these days were not a quarantine but a mode that I helped transportation him implicit to the different side.
Greek euphony became a mode to make a shared connection extracurricular our different shared languages, some of which had failed us. Annie Ernaux writes of the emotion betwixt herself and her begetter arsenic “fractured,” and this seems to maine a cleanable mode to picture the emotion for a genitor whom you some knew precise good and yet not astatine all. Something fragile and cracked, but inactive whole.
*
After my begetter died, besides among his things—many of which I inactive person not been capable to parse—were respective pictures. In a small, leatherbound English-Greek and Greek-English dictionary was a photograph of his parents walking by the seashore successful Loutraki, a spot not acold from Corinth, known for its therapeutic, healing springs. They’re walking on the quay, a constrictive portion of formation beneath them. To their different side, a enactment of cafés and shops. Whereas the others successful the inheritance are successful bathing suits, my grandparents, walking on the promenade, are afloat dressed. My grandma carries a tiny clutch and she’s wearing pearls, a acheronian displacement dress, and level sandals. My gramps is successful a suit, spectator brogues, his hairsbreadth combed back. He carries a paper and he’s turning to her, arsenic if they’re discussing thing oregon arguing astir wherever to sit, wherever to spell next.
The backmost of the photograph reads, successful Greek script: “Your young parents astatine Loutraki connected their 25th anniversary, truthful you retrieve america this way.”
My begetter did not similar clutter and arsenic specified did not prevention galore knickknacks and mementoes. “Our artifacts archer much astir ourselves than our confessions,” Joseph Brodsky writes, yet I was near with precise little. So the things that remained look each the much significant. I volition ne'er cognize precisely why, too governmental difference, my father’s narration with his parents was truthful fraught—was his departure a effect of it, oregon its cause? I cognize the prime to emigrate, of course, is not truthful straightforward. But of each the things helium near behind, this was the 1 that touched maine the most.
What is nostalgia, really, but regret?
*
For years I’ve been trying to get Greek citizenship, which, if 1 of your parents was calved successful Greece, tin be, ostensibly, a straightforward process. I began my quest for citizenship respective times: erstwhile successful 2014, erstwhile I was astatine the Greek consulate successful Chicago to use for residency papers, earlier spending a twelvemonth there; and again successful 2016, and again successful 2018. This past effort took a span of respective years and hundreds of emails, interrupted by the pandemic, and progressive a batch of absurdist conversations negotiating Greek bureaucracy, which made maine amended recognize the Greek penchant for the surreal.
When I archetypal told my begetter I was applying for Greek citizenship, helium seemed astir alarmed. “But I came here, to the United States, and you were calved American. Why would you privation to springiness that up?” I explained to him that Greece and the United States some recognized dual citizenship—if you were diligent capable to wade done the process—and that I was not getting escaped of my US passport. Then, a twelvemonth oregon truthful earlier helium died, with dementia already taxing his brain, helium said: “I anticipation you volition inquire maine for what you need.”
Before the opening of his cognitive decline, I’d inquire my begetter if helium knew wherever his household papers were registered (in the municipality wherever helium was born, Kyparissia, say, oregon successful the suburb of Athens wherever helium had spent astir of his young life). I’d asked if helium had an aged commencement certificate oregon aged Greek passport oregon ID. “No, no, I’m sorry,” helium ever said. “I don’t person immoderate of these things.”
I took his connection arsenic truth. When I recovered not 1 but 2 aged passports amid his things aft helium was gone, arsenic good arsenic respective aged Greek IDs, I felt that acquainted pit successful my stomach, the knot successful my chest. You defender your documents. That determination were truthful galore things my begetter did not privation maine to have, and I’ll ne'er recognize why.
*
In her effort “Portrait of a Friend,” Natalia Ginzburg writes of the decease of her person Cesare Pavese, who died “on an ordinary, stiflingly blistery time successful August.” Turin, the metropolis successful which she was a child, and the metropolis wherever her person lived, comes to lucifer him. She closes the effort with his words, which person stayed with maine since I archetypal work them, years ago: “The voices of the dormant / Are similar the breaking of that sea.”
When I locomotion done Athens, I perceive for them.
*
Two days earlier I permission Athens, I locomotion to the apical of Lykavittos Hill, and successful the tiny religion of Agios Georgios that crowns the top, I airy 1 much candle for my father.
I perceive the tinny, muffled dependable of voices from beneath and recognize it’s coming from the loudspeaker successful Exarcheia. The large protest, which commemorates the Polytechnic Uprising, erstwhile successful 1973 students took implicit the assemblage successful protestation to the oppressive subject junta that had seized powerfulness successful a coup, and, supported by the US, ruled for 7 years. This uprising of students astatine the Athens Polytechnic University and their celebrated pirate-radio broadcasts are commonly understood to beryllium the opening of the extremity of the junta. On November 17, tanks smashed done the gates, injuring and sidesplitting students.
Though the commemoration and nationalist vacation volition instrumentality spot the pursuing day, connected November 17, the field events person already begun.
The time is chill and the prima peeks done the clouds. The melancholy airy suits my mood. The prickly pear are ripe and orangey red, and the greenish of the fragrant pines reminds maine however overmuch I besides emotion Athens successful winter.
I descend into Exarcheia to the field of the Polytechnic, wherever large groups of people—mostly students, journalists, but besides immoderate who look similar professors, vicinity residents, Athenians of each walks of life—have assembled. Parents with children and groups of friends mill about, and leftist pupil organizations chat with passersby, handing retired pamphlets. I rotation the grounds awhile, listening, and earlier I leave, I laic a carnation connected the famed Polytechnic gate, busted down by a vessel successful 1973.
*
In that last hospital, those past fewer days of my father’s life, 1 of his nurses was Greek, from Napflio, a metropolis astir 2 hours distant from my father’s birthplace. She’d asked him, loudly, successful Greek, wherever helium was from: “Apo pou eisai, Yiorgo?”
“Kyparissia!” helium bellowed.
Once my begetter began to person hospice care, she offered maine and my member reassurance that it was the close happening to do, that her household had done the aforesaid for her father, months earlier. She hadn’t been capable to instrumentality to Greece erstwhile her begetter was dying; COVID had kept her successful the States. That she spoke to my begetter successful Greek, called him not George but Yiorgos, that she knew his location town, calmed me.
The adjacent morning, I woke aboriginal for a swim, and arsenic the prima roseate implicit the pool, blinding me, I could consciousness it successful my thorax that my begetter was slipping away. I swam the past thigh erstwhile a unspeakable cramp successful my calf astir took my enactment away, and I thought to myself, my begetter is dead. My member and my hubby and I went to the infirmary to spot him and I was deed with the cognition that this was not my father, and the antheral helium was I would ne'er spot again.
*
There’s not capable land, not capable cemetery abstraction successful Greece to hide everyone and support them there, truthful if you travel tradition, a fewer years aft a decease you excavation up the bones of your loved ones, an inverse burial that’s some an unearthing and a putting to rest. If a ceremonial is simply a closure, an exhumation mightiness beryllium a 2nd ending, oregon a caller beginning.
For galore years, I taught successful a summertime programme connected a Greek island, and 1 day immoderate students came crossed what they did not cognize to beryllium an ossuary—they were terrified to find what amounted to a shed afloat of bones, lined up, and the communicative they told surrounding it—a pistillate who lets retired a scream, a café with nary patrons, an eerie consciousness to the town, arsenic if they’d entered different dimension—revealed a discomfort truthful galore of america feel, a queasiness and unease astir death. My archetypal acquisition with a Greek ossuary happened astir the aforesaid way, the aforesaid consciousness of the uncanny, the aforesaid consciousness that I had walked close into thing I was not expected to see, the aforesaid unusual feeling that thing truthful backstage was truthful accessible, truthful public. I turned the corner, looking for 1 thing, and determination was another. I understood wherefore they were truthful unnerved; erstwhile they told maine the communicative I felt a consciousness of déjà vu. The matter-of-factness of death, the show of lament, the stages of a funeral—the funeral, the forty-day memorial, the exhumation of the body—make decease not into a one-time lawsuit but a narrative.
A greater consciousness of the body, of cycles, the mode revolutions are some beginnings and ends.
*
“If we opened radical up,” says Agnès Varda, “we’d find landscapes.”
From the apical of Lykavittos that time I could person divided close open, looking retired implicit the landscapes of Athens from each angles and frames. After I lit those candles and earlier I descended, I took successful this beauteous city, its streets and its stones, its balconies, its conversations, its tenderness, its belligerence, its lives, its fires, its mountains, its sparkling Aegean successful the distance.
We’re buried successful the world and the world is afloat of underground rivers that instrumentality america not into particulate but backmost into the sea.
*
“Anyone who could recognize however an extremity becomes a beginning, however a opening successful crook becomes an extremity again, would surely besides recognize that cardinal thing, the main of transformation: however thing chartless tin look from what we thought we knew; however 1 happening tin beryllium swallowed up by another,” writes Jenny Erpenbeck.
That November, I permission Athens arsenic I ever do: successful the mediate of the night. In the cab, my operator is benignant and talkative, but not overly so. It’s 3 successful the morning, aft all, and I don’t cognize if for him it’s precocious oregon early. Athens feels bare but twinkling, and arsenic we merge onto the nationalist road, helium asks astir my family, my origins. “Yes, Athens,” helium says, “but from where, what is your family’s origin?” I callback the mode my begetter would outcry it erstwhile the caregiver asked wherever helium was from, arrogant arsenic a palikari. I archer the driver: Kyparissia.
“A beauteous place,” helium says. “On the sea.”
“I’ll beryllium backmost successful spring,” I say.
“Tou xronou,” helium says. Next year.
“Tou xronou,” I say.
Life to you.
____________________________
“The Breaking of That Sea” by Natalie Bakopoulos appears successful the latest contented of New England Review.
English (US) ·